Pat Buchanan: American Jews Made "Collective Decision" To Abort Themselves Out Of Existence

In his new book, Suicide Of A Superpower, Pat Buchanan takes a look at the Jewish population of the United States and concludes that Americans Jews are disappearing because they decided, as a group, to have lots and lots of abortions.

Israel became home to the largest Jewish population only because the number of American Jews plummeted in the 1990s from 5.5 to 5.2 million. Six percent of the U,S, Jewish population, 300,000 Jews, vanished in a decade. By 2050, the U.S. Jewish population will shrink another 50 percent to 2.5 million. American Jews appear to be an endangered species.

Why is this happening? It is a result of the collective decision of Jews themselves. From Betty Friedan to Gloria Steinem in the 1970s to Ruth Bader Ginsburg today, Jewish women have led the battle for abortion rights. The community followed. A survey in 2000 by the Center for Jewish Community Studies in Baltimore found 88 percent of the Jewish public agreeing that "Abortion should be generally available to those who want it." [Suicide Of A Superpower, page 176]

There are a couple of things to point out here. First and foremost, it's perverse to suggest that strong Jewish support for reproductive rights translates to Jewish women enthusiastically seeking out abortion services. Second, it's not entirely certain that the U.S. Jewish population has even decreased. A 2010 study out of Brandeis University found that from 1990 to 2010, the Jewish population in America increased by 20 percent.

Moreover, if there has been a decline in the Jewish population, surely there are more plausible explanations than a heretofore unremarked gusto among Jewish women for terminating pregnancies at the behest of Justice Ginsburg.

And Buchanan even acknowledges that he doesn't really have any facts -- though he does quote a Philip Roth novel:

As Jews were 2 to 3 percent of the U.S. population from Roe v. Wade to 2010, how many of the fifty million abortions since 1973 were performed on Jewish girls or women? How many Jewish children were never conceived because of birth control?

In Philip Roth's The Counterlife, a militant Israeli character says, "what Hitler couldn't achieve at Auschwitz, American Jews are doing to themselves in the bedroom." [Page 176]

Remember, this is the same Pat Buchanan who opposed Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court out of concern that the high court would have too many Jews in relation to their percentage of the population. So you can see why any decrease in the Jewish population would upset him so.